An Emirates 777-300ER is hardly a rarity. They have a huge fleet of them and, since this one is a new build aircraft on test at Boeing, the fleet is going to grow. What made this one fun was the light. Some stormy weather had been in the area and the sun was out on the white fuselage while the background was still looking rather mean. Both on the runway and on the approach, it shone brightly against the background and that is why I am sharing it today.
This is the cruise ship that our family had been traveling on when they arrived in Vancouver. It was heading back out the same day and we watched it leave port and head out. As it was turning to head back to the open sea, one of the local Otter floatplanes was making its approach to land (or whatever the correct word is when it is water rather than land). It passed in front of the ship. Both vessels are comfortable in the water but one is on a rather different scale than the other.
Boeing has completed flight testing of the first version of the 737 Max family, the Max 8. The Max 9 is currently in flight test and I posted shots of one of those aircraft here. While some additional flight testing will be carried out on the Max 8, the test fleet is now done. In due course, these aircraft will be refurbished and sold on to customers. In the meantime, new production jets are being built for delivery – except when it comes to Southwest.
As a result of a crewing issue, Southwest is delaying taking its jets until they have removed the 737-300 fleet from service. Consequently, Boeing is building them but not delivering them. There are a number parked up in the parking lot at Boeing Field and some are still sitting at Renton. Engines aren’t fitted since this is one way to keep the cost down pending delivery. They will be fitted and flown nearer the delivery date.
The flight line of these dormant Max 8s sits alongside the municipal part of the airport. I created a panorama of the jets which you can zoom and pan around below.
Aside from the suspension bridge at Capilano, there is a treetop walk. This is on the opposite side of the bridge and is an interesting attraction. They have built a number of walkways that run through the treetops. These are old growth trees that are really substantial. Without cutting in to the trees, they have mounted platforms around the trunks and strung walkways between them. You get to walk along these walkways from tree to tree.
You are up in the higher parts off the tree so you have a different perspective to that which you would normally get walking along the ground. Indeed, you can get so used to being up there that you forget you are off the ground. Every once in a while, it is a good idea to look down to see just how far you are from the base of some of the trees.
There are so many people up there with you that it is easy to become a bit fixated on keeping going. The walkways are one way so you are all moving along in the same direction. You can start following the person in front and lose perspective on where you are. However, at each tree there is space to step aside and let people pass. Then you can take a moment to look around and embrace your surroundings. I highly recommend you do this if you visit. Look up and look down and see exactly where you are – up with the squirrels in the treetops.
Union Pacific is one of the large freight railroads in the US. Their fleet of locomotives is commonly seen across the US west of Chicago. They are painted yellow and carry a large American flag on the side. However, trains are not the only way that staff of UP get around. They also own a Dassault Falcon 2000 and I saw it come in to Boeing Field. While it isn’t painted like a loco, it certainly shares a few design cues with them and it looks a bit more interesting than the average all white scheme.
A pair of hippos was hanging out in the water of their enclosure in Woodland Park Zoo. One was facing away from us and was submerged for most of the time. The other was facing us and was staring in our direction. The shot I want of a hippo is the large yawn showing off the scary array of teeth that backs up their reputation as one of the most dangerous animals to man. This guy wasn’t obliging. They say that humans have a natural reaction to seeing a yawn from someone of yawning themselves. The people that don’t do this have a higher probability of being sociopaths. I thought I would try it with the hippo. Either it knew I was faking it or hippos are sociopaths. I wonder which it is.
Everything I have posted about the eclipse so far is about us and what we saw. However, we weren’t alone. There were lots of people watching in the same place as us. During the initial stages of the eclipse, I wandered around the site to get a few pictures of people enjoying the experience. I didn’t have another camera other than my phone so that had to make do but these are some of the shots of everyone enjoying a rare experience that I got.
When totality occurred during the eclipse, I was literally and figuratively in the dark. I had practiced shots of the sun prior to the day to get the exposure right and, while the eclipse covered up the sun, the remaining section was unaffected so the exposures were right. Besides, I bracketed each shot because, we, why not? At totality, I removed the solar filter and switched to program mode because I didn’t want to have to work anything other than the shutter. I still bracketed the shots.
I got shots that I really liked but, I didn’t get anything that showed any detail around the edge of the eclipse. Everything was bright. Even with wide bracketing, the shots were quite blown out. I was a little disappointed by this but it was a minor thing. Seeing the eclipse had proved to be far more satisfying than any shot I got. However, it turns out an error of mine had a lucky side effect.
I had been shooting a time lapse sequence on the other camera. When I removed the solar filter (eventually) during totality, I didn’t change the exposure. Consequently, the shots were a lot more underexposed than the shots on the other camera. While the subject was a lot smaller in the frame because of the framing for the time lapse progression, I still had some detail of the eclipse and I realized some solar flares were visible on the side of the eclipse. I hadn’t planned this – it just happened by luck and I am happy to take all the luck I can get. As they say, “Better to be lucky than good!”
When thinking about the eclipse and what photos I wanted to get, I did contemplate running a video of the transition. However, since the start to finish was going to be over two hours, I figured that would be a lot of video that would never get used or would only be seen speeded up. Therefore, a time lapse seemed like the best option. I set up a camera with the 100-400 lens on it can’t at an angle to, hopefully, align with the direction the sun progressed across the sky. I didn’t know how much time it would take to cross the viewfinder so I planned on taking a number of sequences with re-positioning after each pass.
This ran just fine during the eclipse itself. My only problems came at totality when I really lost the plot on what I was supposed to do, so overcome was I by the sight of the corona. I initially forgot to remove the solar filter so everything was just dark. When I did take it off, I had not adjusted from the manual exposure I had been running up to that time. However, in the scheme of the eclipse, the totality moment was fleeting so is not a big part of the time lapse anyway.
I have edited together the sequences I shot and here is the resulting video.
One camera was set up for the eclipse with the 500mm and the 1.4x teleconvertor. This was the one I was aiming to get the detail shots with. I had a solar filter mounted on the lens and had experimented a little with exposures in the days before the eclipse. A few trial shots showed that the exposures were not too bad and I bracketed everything anyway to be on the safe side. This set up was very sensitive to the progression of the sun across the sky so, I had to regularly reset the location. I wished I had a different head on the tripod but the ball head was okay, just a touch sensitive to adjust. A cable release meant I could stand and watch while triggering the camera without having to be distracted.
From first contact to totality took over an hour. At times, it seemed to be moving quickly and at others you felt like it hadn’t moved at all or you even imagined it had retreated. Of course it hadn’t, but you could imagine all sorts of things while waiting.
As the level of obscuration increased, it was interesting to see how little some things changed. Indeed, even when the sun was almost totally gone, the ambient light levels were actually very high. There was something about the quality of the light that was different though. We didn’t have a lot of wildlife nearby so some of the things that we had heard about in advance didn’t affect us. (The mosquitoes certainly were happy judging by the number of bites on my legs!) As totality approached, we did see a bunch of vultures flying high above us and I wondered what they were about to do when they found themselves in the dark at altitude. The drop in light levels was rapid and staring around as it happened was very weird.
When totality hit, the last hint of the sun disappeared through our glasses and we took them off. The view that greeted us is something I shall never forget. The images are a great reminder but I had seen shots of previous eclipses plenty of times. Seeing it in person was a rare time when the word awesome truly deserved to be used. I looked up at the corona and was overwhelmed. It was stunning. I felt like it couldn’t be real – like someone had created a CGI effect in front of me. I can’t imagine what the effect on people was in centuries past. Since you can’t look at the sun directly and the light doesn’t change too much until the last minute, this would come as a hell of a shock to someone unprepared. The corona that is left would make you think something apocalyptic was happening. Knowing it was coming, I was unprepared. They must have freaked out!
The light on the horizon meant you could still make things out. It wasn’t totally dark which is what I had anticipated. I also think some of the high-level cloud was making the corona look a little diffuse. For a couple of minutes we just stared. I remembered to take the filter off the long lens but forgot about it on the time lapse camera initially. I also didn’t change the exposure on that camera even then although more on that another time. After just over two minutes, the sun peeked back out and everyone cheered for some reason we probably couldn’t explain afterwards. The light levels rapidly came back up and suddenly it was over. Sure, there was another hour or so as the transit completed but somehow it was done. We weren’t in a hurry but people around us started to pack up and leave and, in due course so did we. As we got to the car, we took one more look through the glasses at the still partially obscured sun and then we started the trek home.